I was flying into Chicago the other week ago. It was night and the lights of the city spread out below. Bright street lights trailing off into the distance. The perspective of the flat straight lines, a grid like some kind of game board from the Tron movie. Street upon Street of homes...lit for the evening.
The familiar thought I used to think when traveling at night...
hitchhiking from place to place.
Looking out of passenger side windows...
looking into the lighted living rooms of the homes that passed in the night.
See people talking, conversing, reading newspapers, living life.
What are those lives? What is in their orbit? What are their workaday lives? Who are their friends? What answers to my questions do they have?
And I thought of the windows of those friends' living rooms...of THEIR home fires and THEIR small worlds.
All of the thousands of places in this city.
Looking down from the sky from my jet plane view. The thousands of stories in these lives.
But as I fly on my route, I see hundreds of cities...thousands of lighted homes...thousands of car headlights heading for those homes.
This human machine (as I like to call it), repeats all across this country...and over into the next, to engulf the world with people...good and bad.
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Loreena McKennitt has a song
"Night Ride Across The Caucasus".
Every time I hear it, I remember my time traveling with The Brethren. Night Rides.
"Once you have tasted the secrets,
you will have a strong desire to understand them"
"Ride On - Through the Night - Ride On
There are visions, there are memories
There are echoes of thundering hooves
There are fires, there is laughter
There's the sound of a thousand Doves
In the velvet of the Darkness
By the silhouette of silent trees
They are watching, they are waiting
They are witnessing Life's Mysteries
Cascading stars on slumbering hills
They are dancing as far as the sea
Riding O'er the land, you can feel it's gentle hand
Leading on to its destiny
Take me with you on this journey
Where the boundaries of time are now tossed
In Cathedrals Of The Forest
In the words of the tongues now lost
Find the Answers, Ask the Questions
Find the roots of an Ancient Tree
Take me dancing, take me singing
I'll ride on till the moon meets the sea.
© July 2005 Marc S. McCune
